A quote from Daniel Hannan MEP in The Daily Telegraph, 1 November 2007

Belgium has now gone for 144 days without a government and you know what?… everything seems normal. [...] Which prompts the thought: perhaps there should never be a Belgian government. Next week, Belgium will break its previous record for going unadministered, and no one – other than the armies of fonctionnaires who fret for their pensions – seems especially bothered.

If things carry on, the Flemish administration may be tempted simply to do a Yeltsin and assume the powers of the defunct federation. [...]

But what of Brussels, the largely French-speaking city that is also the capital of Flanders? Well, here the Euro-enthusiasts have plans. If Belgium falls into its two constituent halves, they aim to lift its ugly grey capital out of the state altogether and place it under direct EU administration as a kind of Washington DC: only then would the EU finally and visibly transcend the nation-state.

The trouble is that this will only happen following a resounding reaffirmation of the national principle. Belgium is failing because there are no real Belgians, just as there are no real Europeans. Rather, there are discrete peoples, with their own languages, television stations and political parties.

A democracy without a demos – the unit with which we identify when we use the word "we" – is left only with kratos: the power of a system that compels by force of law what it cannot ask in the name of patriotism. And kratos alone cannot sustain a state.